Betsy is doing a unique new show for the Boulder International Fringe Festival. Betsy wrote the script from real-life stories from local seniors -- people who might otherwise not get out to go to a theater show. Betsy wants to spark discussion in the community and make people think.

You might think this Betsy lady is pretty ambitious and busy. And you would be right -- at least with the latter part. The pronunciation is right, too, but the spelling is what's off. It's BETC, as in the Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company, as in 11 members, four staff and seven board of director members. Although, as an ensemble, the members switch up their roles and responsibilities, sometimes acting, other times directing or writing or designing the stage, so in a sense, you could say BETC functions like one singular, ever-evolving unit.

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We recently sat down with member and director, Heather Beasley, of Longmont, for the low-down on the company's upcoming show, the "American Generations Project," which is like nothing the group has ever pursued before.

Whereas BETC usually performs finished, polished works by published playwrights, this show is based on the life stories of people around town.

What's the story behind doing this project?

Increasingly, people see themselves are artistic participators. They don't want to go to a show, sit there passively, do nothing and leave. We really live in an information age where people are used to being creators. They make their own Youtube videos, they put things on Facebook, they share things and expect participation and social interaction with their entertainment.

We were looking for a way to offer our community an opportunity to be creators themselves. This project came out of the question, "How do we successfully go out to our community instead of asking them to come to us?"

Theater's trying very much to figure out, as a field, how do we compete with television and video and film. We can't do special effects, like film. We have no CGI. So how do we keep live storytelling interesting?

So what did you do?

We were looking to target an audience we have difficulty reaching: low- and middle-income people who think of theater as something for rich people or an elite, exclusive club. We partnered with Circle of Care, a nonprofit here in Boulder that transports low- to middle-income seniors to arts events around Boulder County.

The program was led by two playwrights, who taught a class based on oral history, storytelling and writing down memories, to seniors age 50 to 90. At the end of our five-week class with 20 seniors, we had piles of material from each of them and two weeks to turn it into a script. In the final project, we use 20 stories -- something from every person. We wanted to bring out their voices and their experience.

Who will be on stage?

None of the seniors in the class are the actors; it's their stories. One of the ways we promoted the class was to say, "We're going to use your stories and put them on stage and make them come alive with our professional actors." It's an opportunity for them to see what someone else would do with their story material.

How did you choose the best stories from so many different people's lifetimes?

Some of it they chose. Sometimes they would write about something personal to them, but they wouldn't give us permission to share it beyond the class, so that limited maybe a third of our material. But it was stuff they needed to write.

How do you tie all of these seemingly unrelated stories into a cohesive script?

It was a challenge, but there were certain things that emerged, a common human experience. For example, we have a couple of great stories about first love and early romance. We have a couple of heart-wrenching stories about divorce and separation and things that go wrong in a marriage. We have stories about childbirth and bad relationships between mothers and daughters and strong relationships between grandmothers and granddaughters.

In a sense, you're bringing back oral storytelling. Why do you think we need to hold on to oral histories in modern society, when we have other ways to communicate like Facebook and blogs?

One of the biggest gaps that we have right now between younger people and older people is a technology gap. For example, my aunt who is 65 this year doesn't have a computer, doesn't have e-mail, can't see family photos if we only post them online.

And while most of the seniors we worked with at least have e-mail, there's a lot of fear and trepidation around the Internet and using computers -- such that in the older populations, many are technophobes, and they don't share and their stories don't get told. There's just a sense, "Why would people want to listen to my stories? Why would my life be interesting to anybody? I didn't do anything all that excellent."

So the opportunity to work with our community and be there and listen to them, I think that's one of the most important roles that the arts can play.

Looking at the stories in the show, what's one that really stands out to you?

One of the themes that emerges with people as they see the show is that so many of our most treasured memories are the small, quiet moments. They aren't the big, exciting things.

My favorite monologue in the show is about a man who takes his great-grandson to Boulder Creek and watches him throw pebbles in the stream, and all the things he's seeing and remembering. It's very simple. It's a small life moment, and it's beautiful. You get the sense of so much, the weight of time, all the memories that he has, just in a very short space of time. It's one of those small sacred moments that you hold on to.

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